and I heard Holmangroan.
"I missed him!" he whispered. "Move along a little, Verslun; they've gota line on our position."
We didn't move a minute too soon. Half a dozen shots broke out from thespot where the light of the lantern had been suddenly quenched, and wefired twice and shifted ground the moment we pulled the triggers.
But the opposition guessed the direction of our sidestep. A bulletlifted my hat into the darkness, and, as I scrambled away, a handtouched my thigh and was immediately taken away.
I felt Holman's body on the other side, and then, clubbing the big Colt,I drove it down through the darkness at a point that my imaginationsuggested would be the most likely place to find the head of thestranger whose hand touched my thigh. The blow missed, and as I made akangaroo-like jump sideways, a spurt of flame blazed out within a yardof my face.
I fired immediately, and the soft _plop_ of a body settling into the drydust upon the floor convinced me that I had settled one of our enemies.
For about ten minutes after that there was no more firing. My skin, morethan my ears, brought to my brain the information that there were otherssomewhere in the thick darkness, but the little air tremors that came tome were so faint that it was impossible to tell in which direction theywere. I had lost all trace of Holman. With extreme caution I crawledtoward what I thought to be the spot where I had left him, but mygroping fingers found only the fragments of bone that covered the dustyfloor of the charnel house.
I sat in the dust and endeavoured to make my addled brains direct me asto the best course to pursue. The silence led me to infer that Leith andhis party, who were evidently familiar with the cave, were making forthe passage by which we had entered the place, and a cold chill passedover me as my imagination pictured Leith, One Eye, and the oily dancerswaiting for Holman and me in the narrow corridor. To escape from theplace immediately was our only chance, and with a courage born of terrorconjured up by the thoughts of imprisonment in that place of skulls, Istarted to crawl rapidly into the dark.
I had not proceeded half a dozen yards when my hand touched a bare leg,and I drew back hastily. With madly pounding heart I crouched in thedust, waiting for an attack, but as I waited I convinced myself that theleg had not been drawn back when my fingers encountered it. With myright hand clubbing my revolver, I reached my left out cautiously, andonce again my fingers came in contact with the bare limb. The fear leftme at that moment. I was back at the spot where I had fired at an unseenfoe some fifteen minutes before, and the body near me was the victim ofmy lucky bullet.
Carefully I felt the dead man. He wore a large feather cloak and a tallheaddress, and I concluded that he was one of the wriggling brutes whoseperformance we had watched in the cave. In the dust, beside the body, myfingers found his revolver, and the fact that he had been armed at themoment his party came unexpectedly upon us was more proof, if proof wereneeded, that Leith's tactics were anything but straightforward.
Securing the revolver, I started to crawl away, but a sudden inspirationcame to me. I stripped the parrot-feather mat and the headdress fromthe corpse and donned them over my own clothing. In the darknessrecognition was made through the fingers, and as there were eightenemies in the cavern and only one friend, I considered that the dangerI ran of receiving a bullet from Holman was more than counterbalanced bythe protection that the dancer's costume would give me if I ran againstthe groping hands of Leith or his gang.
After a wearisome crawl I touched the wall of the cavern, and standingupright I debated for a moment whether I should move to the right or theleft. I had no definite idea as to the position of the opening throughwhich we had entered the place, and I dreaded the weary circuit of thecavern which I would be compelled to make if I turned in the wrongdirection. It was possible that the corridor was within a few yards ofme, and if I turned away from it I might get lost in other passagesleading to the long gallery where the dance of death had taken place.
I decided to move to the right, and with one hand upon the cold wall Istumbled forward. If Holman was still a prisoner, Edith Herndon and hersister were entirely unprotected, and my tormenting imagination made methrow prudence to the winds. I had to reach the camp before Leith or anyof his evil bodyguard arrived, and, becoming reckless of the terrors ofthe dark, I ran blindly in my desperate desire to find the path into theopen air.
I cannoned into a man who was standing with his back to the wall of thecave, and before I could lift my arm his fingers had gripped my throat.For a second we struggled, then he released his grip and murmured somewords in a dialect that I did not understand. His hand had touched theparrot-feather mat that I had drawn about my shoulders, and he wasconvinced that I was one of his own companions.
Still holding my shoulder he pushed me a pace or two forward, andinstinctively I knew that I was in the corridor. The faintest tremordisturbed the heavy air, and a wild surge of joy rushed through mybeing. The place of skulls had brought a terror upon me that swept awaymy reason, but the knowledge that I was on the way to the open, where Icould fill my lungs with God's pure air, acted as a powerfulrestorative.
As my guide's fingers slipped from my shoulder, I stood still andlistened. His heavy breathing was distinctly audible, and with a prayerto Providence to guide my right hand, I brought the butt of the heavyrevolver down through the darkness. It must have caught him squarelyupon the crown, for he dropped without a groan.
"Holman!" I shrieked. "Where are you, Holman? The passage is here! Thisway, quick!"
A revolver cracked within two feet of me, and the bullet ripped throughthe tall headdress. I crouched quickly and ran along the corridor. Therewas no answering cry from Holman, and although it was possible that hewould not disclose his whereabouts by replying to my yell, I decidedthat I could do little to help him in the impenetrable darkness.Besides, Edith Herndon and her sister were in danger, and the dawn wascoming rapidly. Throwing off the parrot-feather mat, which had served meto such good purpose, I raced headlong toward the opening. A few bats,returning early to their sleeping quarters, banged against my face, butthe way was otherwise clear, and with a cry of joy I rushed through themouth of the passage into the calm, clear night.
CHAPTER XIV
BACK TO THE CAMP
The path, with its coating of coral lime, stretched before me, and Ifled along it. The moon had disappeared behind the hills, but the limedtrack was quite distinct. My watch had stopped, but I judged that therewas still a good two hours before the dawn, and I ran as I had never runin my life. I recognized what sort of feeling I possessed for EdithHerndon as I raced through the lonely night, and I reproached myselfbitterly for leaving the camp. I became convinced that Leith had set outfor the resting place of the Professor and his two daughters afterplacing guards at the inner opening of the corridor to see that Holmanand I did not escape from the cavern, and I realized the terror whichthe two girls would experience when the big brute reached the camp.
"The devil!" I muttered. "The fiendish brute!"
A chuckle came from a boulder beside the track, and Holman's cheeryvoice set my pulses beating.
"You frightened the dickens out of me, Verslun," he cried. "I thoughtyou were one of the evil legion. Gee! I'm glad to see you."
"How did you get out?" I gasped as we rushed on together. "I thought Ileft you in the cavern."
"It was a good job you didn't," he retorted. "There was a husky niggerat the outside entrance of the passage, and he gave me the fight of mylife. Get off this track; they might be after us at any moment."
"Do you think that Leith has made for the camp?" I asked.
"I suppose he has. We must move as fast as we can, Verslun. If hereaches there before us we'll deserve any fate that will come to us. Weshouldn't have left them."
The utterance of the conviction that had come to both of us brought asilence, and we rushed across the boulder-strewn ground that we hadcrossed earlier in the night. We felt certain that Leith knew of a surerand safer path back to the camp, but it was useless for us to hunt f
or anew trail at that moment. We would have to find our way down the nearlyperpendicular wall up which we had climbed after leaving the crevicethrough which we had viewed the death dance, and, to me at least, therecollections of that path brought feelings that were by no meanspleasant. But Leith was making toward the camp, and the horriblethoughts aroused by the spectacle which we had witnessed in the earlynight muzzled the thrills which the dangers of the climb sent throughour bodies. The dance had terrified the Fijian by arousing thoughts ofthe deeds that would happen in its wake, and Kaipi's terror became agauge for us to measure its dread significance.
We reached the cliffs and ran up and down the ledge in a vain search forthe spot where we had clawed our way to the top. Not that we thought thefinding of the place would solve the problem of the descent. It was hardto conceive of a more difficult way than the one by